Marc Rysman (BU) and Julian Wright (NUS): The Economics of Payment Cards. From Popular Science, and the winner is: Your choice for the most important invention of the last 25 years. Swati Pandey reviewsTwentysomething: Why Do Young Adults Seem Stuck? by Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig. From Knowledge@Wharton, an interview with Gretchen Rubin, author of Happier at Home. Oh God, what have we done? Jackson Lears reviewsInside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk. The notion that dozens of people losing their lives in an act of violence in a public facility should not be an object of political reflection is truly bizarre — so where does the specter of "politicization" come from? Here’s “Death Travels West, Watch Him Go”, an essay by Mike Newirth on the gun culture, the massacre culture, and the Market, tragically relevant today even though published in The Baffler way back in 2001. If the Newtown massacre doesn't change us, no shooting ever will. The new online journal Political Concepts offers a growing lexicon of essays ruminating on the inherent (or not so inherent) political nature of common objects, categories, and ideas.